My seams gape wide so I'm tossed aside

  To rot on a lonely shore

While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold,

  For the last of my trails are o'er;

But I float in dreams on Northland streams

  That never again I'll see,

As I lie on the marge of the old portage

  With grief for company.

When the sunset gilds the timbered hills

  That guard Timagami,

And the moonbeams play on far James Bay

  By the brink of the frozen sea,

In phantom guise my Spirit flies

  As the dream blades dip and swing

Where the waters flow from the Long Ago

  In the spell of the beck'ning spring.

Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal

  When the first frost bites the air,

And the mists unfold from the red and gold

  That the autumn ridges wear?

When the white falls roar as they did of yore

  On the Lady Evelyn,

Do the square-tail leap from the black pools deep

  Where the pictured rocks begin?

Oh! the fur-fleets sing on Timiskaming

  As the ashen paddles bend,

And the crews carouse at Rupert House

  At the sullen winter's end;

But my days are done where the lean wolves run,

  And I ripple no more the path

Where the gray geese race cross the red moon's face

  From the white wind's Arctic wrath.

Tho' the death fraught way from the Saguenay

  To the storied Nipigon

Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell

  I watch the years roll on,

While in memory's haze I live the days

  That forever are gone from me,

As I rot on the marge of the old portage

  With grief for company.